No. 6

Maria looks like me
When my hair was the color of spilled honey
Crawling down the side of
A porcelain bowl
I used to hold my grandmother's brown hand
Against my cheek to see if it was hotter,
I thought the darker niamo were charred from all the fire inside
And that's how their hair got black
On the inside they were still
Smouldering
Like pieces of coal, red at the center
They said
I came out this way
Because I was full of water, and if I was not careful
I would spill.
Even our laughter is hot,
And our nighttime lullabies are brigaki djilia
So that nobody forgets
That all volcanoes are unwanted

I promise
We have no use for your offspring, gadje,
But you continue insisting on taking ours
Blessing them with celestial monikers
"Blonde Angels," the ones who are not burnt,
The ones like Maria, like me,
Couldn't possibly belong to such a scorched people
Such a filthy, heathen people,
You'd think we had climbed out of cracks in the earth
Descended upon you with our violins
To make feasts of your young
And debauchers of your husbands
You'd think we arrived breathing smoke.

Maria belongs now, to everybody
To the newspapers and the government
To the glorified orphanage
Which will sell her to a proper, light- skinned family, the kind with a written language
And straight teeth
And we will hope she remembers the name
The Ursitory gave to her.

Now, you are too polite for blatant genocide, so you must
Make delicate mistakes
On behalf of the poor, alabaster children- but only those.

On another continent, I might have been Maria,
But instead I am here
Still hunting our uncounted dead,
Lest we become unable to find each other
Once the volcanoes open their bellies.

When it is time, I will become a flood.